andrew_j_walker Apr 10, 2010
>Thanks for putting these in Bill, it's really appreciated! I'm
> Hi Andrew,
>
> > Firstly, elements.txt has a nice output of the most recent fit orbit
> > which includes keplerian and rectangular/cartesian coordinates. I'd like
> > to see this file get appended to when producing a series of
> > monte-carlo orbit (and please keep the heliocentric ecliptic elements
> > for the position/velocity coordinates!) so the net result is this
> > file will have 50, 100 or whatever clone data sets.
>
> That one was easy enough to do. Find_Orb will now create a file,
> 'state.txt', that is basically just a log of all the 'elements.txt'
> files created for a Monte Carlo run. Some parsing will doubtless be
> required to get that into Mercury or Swifter, though (dunno much about
> either program).
>
> > Secondly, there should be a way of getting a set of the planets'
> > position/velocity coordinates for whatever epoch is used for the
> > fitting. The main thing is that it has the exact same reference frame
> > as the output asteroid coordinates.
>
> That was a little trickier, but not much so. To get it, you'll need
> to add the line
>
> PLANET_STATES=y
>
> to the file 'environ.dat'. State vectors for all planets and the moon
> will then be shown in 'elements.txt'.
>
> The above is included in the 'in development' version, at
>
> http://www.gwi.net/~pluto/devel/find_orb.htm
>
> ...concerning which, more in my next message.
>
> -- Bill
>